


Rey and Ben Watch The Irishman

by kalx58



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Apologies to marty, Co-workers, Cunnilingus, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Hux is part of film twitter for sure, Oral Sex, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:35:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22077064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalx58/pseuds/kalx58
Summary: What the title says. Rey is thirsty, The Irishman is a million hours long.That’s that, Rey tells herself firmly. Ben has chosen the vibe and the vibe is platonic-work-friends, not sexy-movie-hookup. Starting now, she’ll redirect all of the mental energy she’d spent thinking about how well his black thermal fits him to the Themes and Authorial Choices of The Irishman. She can’t wait.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 32
Kudos: 388





	Rey and Ben Watch The Irishman

<reyjoh> woo it’s finally on netflix!! Whose ready to watch 3.5 hrs of marty and co on their cracked 13 in laptop screen!!! 🇮🇪 🇮🇪 🇮🇪

<a_hux> Who’s*

<reyjoh> 😑

<a_hux>And I hope you’re kidding about watching it at home. Otherwise, cinema really is dead.

<b_solo> Dude, shut up

<a_hux> I’m just saying, I don’t think you’ll be able to fully understand the depths of what Scorese is trying to say if you watch it on a laptop. The theater downtown is showing it. Just see it there.

<reyjoh> Lol 1) if you think I’m seeing a three and a half hour movie in the theater when I could be watching it in my sweatpants with my snacks on the couch 2) why would I spend $15 when I get netflix free (aka poe’s account)

<a_hux>I just hope you’ll be able to see the details of what he’s trying to do in possibly the FINAL MOVIE OF HIS CAREER on your tiny screen.

<b_solo> Jesus

<b_solo> If you guys are interested, we can just watch it at my house this weekend. I have a TV that should hopefully meet Hux’s standards.

<reyjoh> that would be awesome!! saturday? I can bring snacks

<a_hux>As long as you remember to turn motion smoothing off, that should be acceptable.

#

On Saturday morning, Rey is examining some produce at the farmer’s market—should she be upset that there’s a bug on the kale she’s about to buy? Doesn’t that mean it’s organic?—when she gets the text.

<It’s Ben. (From work.) So, Hux is bailing on tonight. I’m still down to watch it, but understand if you want to raincheck.>

Rey bites her lip. What does she want? Ever since Ben Solo started at her work around six months ago, as part of a merger that brought his team of research engineers to her company, he’s made her feel off balance. She’d been sure she had him figured out his first day, after he ignored her smile and outstretched hand, responding to her, “I’m Rey, nice to meet you! Feel free to ask me if you need anything, the printer on this floor can be a bit wonky—” with a curt nod and an assessing stare. Wounded, she’d decided that 1) he was an asshole, and 2) a weird looking one at that. Did anyone really need to be that tall? She’d started cataloging all the annoying things about him. Whenever she passed by meetings of his team, him and Hux always seemed to be yelling at each other. He never talked to anyone in the kitchen, just stalked in for more coffee. And sometimes, he’d steal the expensive beans that Finn and her had bought for themselves. (She began keeping them at her desk). He doesn’t seem to care about the happy hours or employee beach cleanups, anything that requires interacting with the rest of the company.

Except for one thing: Rey’s #netflixandchill Slack channel. She’d started it as an alternative to the (multiple!) sports channels Poe had created, and it quickly became a popular place for people to share whatever dour British crime drama (Holdo) or obscure anime (Finn) they were watching. Hux began posting links to thousand-word Letterboxd reviews packed with semicolons and grand opinions about The State of Cinema. A few months ago, Ben had joined the channel. His contributions were mainly terse reviews of documentaries (“Unhappy but vital.” “Doesn’t trust it’s audience. Pedestrian and maudlin.”) Sometimes, they intrigued Rey, and led to her watching the movies alone in her room, wondering at Ben’s taste. At some point, she found herself looking forward to his posts.

Then Rey noticed Ben had a habit of lunchtime runs, and felt...something when she saw him, hulking and shirtless and sweaty, as she walked to the market nextdoor for some dubious sushi.

(“Do you think he’s hot?” she’d once asked her roommate Rose, showing her an Instagram photo Finn had taken of all of them at their compulsory company picnic, where they’d limited everyone to a single slice of pizza. In it, she’s grinning near the front, and Ben is staring into the camera, angrily clutching an empty pizza box.

Rose had tilted her face to the right. Then to the left. “He’s not my type,” she says. “But,” she adds thoughtfully, “That nose looks like it’d be great for eating—”

“Ok, never mind,” Rey yelps, snatching her phone back.)

Her impression of Ben had tilted again when she saw him listening patiently as their facilities manager told him a long, elaborate story he’d told told everyone in the office at least a billion times. She realized that in larger meetings, while he could often be brusque (lots of flat, “That’s not possible,” in response to requests from other departments) and unsparing (“This code has a lot of errors,” while she’d been presenting an example of the product, and of course the code in the example wasn’t what she’d actually use, thank you) but never quite mean, the way other people on his team tended to be. She noticed how he was usually the first to suggest a solution on Slack when one of the interns had problems with their code, even if he delivered it without the kind of great-job-you’ve-got-it couching that people like Poe did.

One day, she’d been playing lunch soccer with some of her team. Finn had kicked the ball wide and it had arced off the grass to the sidewalk where Ben was running. He turned his head at Rey’s yell, and hadn’t just kicked the ball back, but had dribbled it onto the grass, neatly avoiding Poe. He’d kicked it to her, and she’d made a goal, winning their competition. Finn and Poe booed, and she’d whooped, turning to Ben. “You should play with us more,” she’d exclaimed. He’d looked at her, eyes sharp for a second, as if sussing out if she actually meant it. He’d seemed to relax at whatever he saw in her face. “Yeah, maybe,” he’d said, with a small grin. Something in Rey’s stomach had swooped, because god, she doesn’t thinks she’s ever seen him smile before. It transforms his entire face, normally so closed off, into something open and relaxed. As he jogged away, Rey had decided she wanted more. More of his rare smiles, more time to unpeel just who Ben Solo was, and maybe, more time with him shirtless.

So, faced with the prospect of a night alone with him, Rey feels a clutch of anticipation as she types out her response.

<Sure! I’m still down to bring snacks>

#

His apartment is on a leafy Oakland street by the lake, and there’s a lemon tree in his front yard. “Wow, you’re so lucky you live alone,” Rey says as she peers around his tidy, borderline austere apartment. She follows with the next thing that pops into her brain. “I bet you get to walk around naked all the time, I'm so jealous.”

Ben turns around—he’s so big he almost fills the doorway, she notes—and gives her a confused half-frown, eyebrows pulling together. Oh god, Rey thinks, why did she say that? She doesn't need to immediately steer the conversation to his nakedness, as much as she's recently realized that it’s something she wants in her life. This is just a platonic coworker group hang, she scolds herself. Just because Hux couldn't make it doesn't mean she should start thinking it's a date or something.

“Uh—” Ben starts to say, as Rey casts around for something to comment on, walking over to his bookshelf and blurting “And you have a pothos! It's even thriving!”

“What, do I seem like some kind of a merciless plant killer?” he says, walking to where she's standing, and some part of Rey perks up. Is he...joking with her? She looks up at him, about to tell him about her collection of dead plants, and he looks back. She can't quite tell what she sees in those dark eyes.

He turns and walks to the kitchen and Rey follows, dropping her bag on the counter. “I probably brought too much,” she says, unpacking her tote. Ben’s eyes widen as he notices her unload multiple boxes of frozen appetizers, three bags of chips and two dips. “I think you're right,” he says, leaning over to examine the top box. “I wasn't aware you could make French onion soup in this format,” he says, frowning at the Trader Joe’s box like it's a puzzle to solve. When he picks up the second box (mac and cheese balls, because why not), muttering “Jesus” as he looks at the nutrition facts, his arm brushes hers. Rey tries not to shiver.

#

They talk while the appetizers bake, and it’s easier than she would have thought. They make fun of Hux’s hot takes about Marvel movies. Ben tells her about how he would get high as a teenager and end up watching hours of black and white movies on TCM. She tells him how the only way she used to be able to afford to see movies was going to the library and borrowing stacks of whatever DVDs they had, which is why she’s seen every foreign language Oscar nominee from 2006.

“What do you feel like drinking,” Ben says, when they’ve piled their plates full of appetizers (Rey had kind of thought that they’d just eat them off the pan, but Ben had said, “Be civilized,” in a stern voice—one that had embarrassingly, kind of, sort of, turned her on—and handed her a plate.) “I have beer in the fridge, wine—” he gestures to a bottle of wine and a corkscrew that she notices is still in it’s packaging, had he bought it for tonight?—“And I thought if you wanted, we could make Irish mules, like for the..” he trails off, looking embarrassed, turning and decisively opening a cabinet and then closing it just as decisively.

“I would love a mule,” she says, charmed by the idea of grumpy, gigantic Ben coming up with themed cocktails. Does he have a Pinterest page, she wonders, as she watches him build their cocktails, the spoon, shot glass and lime wedges all doll-sized in his large hands.

#

“No, no—stop it I don't want to watch a trailer for that shit—Jesus, that guy’s in everything this year—ok, there you are.” They're sitting on Ben’s couch in front of his TV, and he's scrolling through his Netflix feed, trying to start The Irishman. (Rey notices with some amusement, that First Wives Club is in his list of recently watched movies.)

She and Ben are sitting on opposite sides on the couch. She had sat down first, so he had chosen to put a full cushion between them. That’s that, Rey tells herself firmly. Ben has chosen the vibe and the vibe is platonic-work-friends, not sexy-movie-hookup. Starting now, she’ll redirect all of the mental energy she’d spent thinking about how well his black thermal fits him to the Themes and Authorial Choices of The Irishman. She can’t wait.

#

Ben's apartment is freezing, Rey realizes a half hour later. She can barely concentrate on how exactly De Niro starts working for the mob, or decide just how uncanny his de-aged face is, because she's trying to suppress tiny shivers. Stupid Ben and his stupid apartment full of windows. No matter how tightly she pulls her jacket around her, she’s still—

“Are you cold?” Ben barks, pausing the movie and rounding on her, eyes intent. She starts. She didn’t think her shivering had been that noticeable, and from the glances she’d snuck at him, thinking how good his profile looked in the half light of the screen, he’d seemed totally absorbed.

“Um...yes?”

“You should have said something,” Ben says, getting up and walking over to a closet. The blanket he extracts is fluffy and and covered with different versions of the Harvard logo.

“Wow, I didn’t realize you had this much school pride,” Rey says as he hands it to her. “Do you hang out with Natalie Portman at alumni meetups and tell people you went to school in Boston instead of just admitting you went to Harvard?”

“No, but I do pronounce it with a soft r when I tell people. Otherwise you don’t get your money’s worth,” he says, watching how she tucks the blanket around herself.

“God, this is so soft. Do they just give these to you when you get in? Learn how to be a leader of tomorrow, here’s your blankie?”

“No, my parents bought it for me,” Ben says, turning away from her. “They forgot my graduation, so they ordered the tackiest thing from the student store as an apology.” He says it lightly enough that she doesn’t immediately register the sadness of what he’s saying.

“Are you cold? Do you want a piece of this?” Rey asks, waving a corner of the blanket at him to distract from her rush of pity for college Ben.

“People from Hahvahd don’t get cold,” he says loftily, starting the movie back up again. “That’s why we’re the leaders of tomorrow.”

#

Twenty minutes later —

“Okay, fine,” he says in his deep voice, startling Rey from her internal count of the one woman character’s lines so far (had it been four words? Or five?) “I would take some blanket.” It’s big but not large enough to span the space between them, so Rey wiggles a little closer and tosses one side to him.

It was a mistake, she realizes immediately. Sitting just this much closer to him makes her hyper aware of him: his smell, how soft his hair looks, how big he is. His presence sucks up all her attention, surrounding her, and she wants to luxuriate in it—Jesus, what is she thinking? She tries to refocus on the TV, ignoring the way her brain starts to pop and fizz every time Ben shifts next to her.

#

An hour later, the movie is still, somehow, nowhere close to being over. During a break, Rey washes her hands in the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror, her eyes and cheeks flushed from her two mules. Stop being so thirsty and weird, she tells herself sternly. When she goes back to the living room, she sees that Ben has already settled himself under part of the blanket, one half obviously left for her.

She sits down and Ben reaches over her to grab the PS4 controller from in front of her on the coffee table, the lean bringing him a little closer. He straightens, but doesn't move back after pressing play. He stays in his new, nearer spot, close enough that his thighs are brushing hers. She feels every inch they're touching and Rey's drunk enough that her brain itches to put a hand on that massive thigh. Instead, she squeezes her hands together and breathes in, hoping the sight of Al Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa will combat the dizzying surge of lust.

#

Rey is an engineer and likes to think she has an objective, measured approach to things. So for the next hour (She’s been watching this for so, so long), she tracks what happens when she shifts and moves ever so slightly away from Ben's side. Not enough to signal that she's trying to get away from him. But little enough to seem like an accident. Every time, he closes whatever new tiny gap she's created, so she ends up back in the same place as before, sleeve to sleeve, him warm and solid against her again. He must then, on some level, not be completely repulsed by her, she realizes triumphantly. That gives her the courage to, during an actually quite funny scene involving a fish, to put her hand on his knee.

She feels his body tense. He turns, looks at her with confusion and uncertainty spiked with interest. “Rey?” he asks. She leans forward and kisses him. Nothing major, just a short testing-the water-kiss to see if there's anything there.

At first, it doesn't seem like it. She's taken him aback, he's not moving and it's dry and his lips are soft but there's nothing more. She senses the kiss’s swift end, already resigning herself to what comes next: a quick exit, humiliated masturbation when she gets home, and studiously avoiding eye contact at meetings.

Then Ben gasps a little, and their kiss deepens. He licks his way into her mouth, tasting like ginger and lime. He kisses her with the intensity she’s learning to expect from him, and she shivers. His smell surrounds her and she presses against him, trying to get closer to its source. She puts her arms on his shoulders, and sighs as he wraps his giant arms around her, pulling her closer. She's warm and all of her blood feels like it's racing and she just wants, and a feral part of her realizes somehow that she's basically sitting on his lap at this point, and she squirms a little and oh, he's warm and hard beneath her, and she moves her hips again.

That seems to shake him. He groans and kisses her hard once more before pulling away, looking dazed, and the expression in his eyes is so warm and tender and a little terrified.

“Rey—fuck,” he says. “Is this ok? You want this?”

“Yes. I want this,” Rey says. “I've wanted this for awhile. If that's, ok?”

He hauls her closer and buries his face in the side of her neck, his breath hot. “Yes. I want—I want that too.”

She rolls her hips again and he bites her neck in retaliation, and now it's her turn to let out a strangled groan. They're grinding like teenagers now, and she loves how big his hands feel roving over her, hesitant at first, rubbing at her shoulders and back and then slowly, too slowly, over her breasts. She moans and bites lightly at his mouth, dizzy with want and she feels overflowing and electric and eager and—

She feels his fingers play around her waist and and she arches closer to him. “Rey, Rey-do you, can I go down on you?”

Everything flies out of Rey’s brain. “Yes, yes,” she says and both their sets of hands are fumbling with her jeans and her underwear is pulled down in a tangle. She crab walks backward onto the couch to lay down and Ben runs his hands down up and her thighs. Just that simple movement, feeling his big hands covering her, makes her skin inflame and she sighs. Ben bends down and hooks his legs over her shoulders, and starts kissing up her thighs. She growls, impatient and ready to drag his head towards her. When he reaches her center, he pauses, then licks a long stroke from her opening to her clit. “You taste so good,” he says. He starts licking her in earnest and he’s so enthusiastic, his moans muffled by her thighs. The sharp edge of his nose is a welcome pressure, and Rose was right, Re thinks wildly. She looks down and he's so big that he's almost doubled over on the couch, her legs over his shoulder, his long dark hair fanned around her lap. Somewhere in the distance, Robert de Niro is still talking.

He grabs her thighs with his big hands and gently pushes her them apart and just stares at her, wet and swollen from his mouth. Rey squirms. He’s slid down to the floor, and somehow the coffee table got pushed back in the last few minutes, and he's now crouched down in front of her on the floor.

“Fuck, Rey, I've wanted this—,” he says, his fingers moving in light circles around her clit. She feels his fingers move, dipping into her moisture, and then he's sliding one large finger inside her and starting to move it. “Is this ok?”

“I think,” Rey pants, “Another, maybe?”

He slides another finger in, so quickly it's almost a shove, and the feeling is strange, a blunt pressure, but something inside her likes the ache, of knowing that it’s his fingers inside her.

“Can you please, move them,” she gasps and she sees him grin—she notices with a jolt of arousal how wet his lips are, from her—and then he thrusts his fingers as he bends his head and sucks hard on her clit. She should be embarrassed, maybe, of how shamelessly she’s riding his face, but he doesn’t stop, his enthusiasm matching hers. She feels the wave of her orgasm start to rise, and grinds harder against his face, and then she’s coming, harder than she maybe ever has before.

When Rey blinks open her eyes, the scene is kind of absurd: her pants and underwear pushed down to mid-thigh, towering Ben, crouched on the floor, still bent over her, slowly rubbing her thighs. She reaches for his arms, wanting him closer. She pulls him down so he’s laying on her, and kisses him, reaching down to rub the erection she feels behind his jeans.

He moans and buries his face in her shoulder as she lazily thrusts her hips. She’s overwarm and halfway to sleepy, but she wants more of him, wants him to feel like she does. “Do you want to have sex?” she whispers into his hair. “Or I can go down on you.”

He jerks his hips at that, and lifts his head to look at her, eyes wide with desire. “We don’t have to,” he says.

“I want to,” she says. At her words, Ben suddenly stands and oh—he lifts her off the couch like it’s easy, hoisting her over his shoulder.

“Uh, Ben? I can walk,” Rey calls, now staring at the ground.

“I know,” he says, and she feels his hands palming her ass as he starts walking.

They enter what she assumes is his bedroom and he deposits her gently on the bed. He starts pulling frantically at his clothes, and oh, Rey had only seen that broad chest from a distance, and wait, how many abs does he have? Doesn’t he sit at a desk all day like she does?

He finishes kicking off his pants and pulls off his black briefs, and Rey gapes. He’s massive, hard and curving toward his stomach and Rey doesn’t quite know if she’ll be able to take him.

She realizes she’s behind, and removes her shirt and already half-off pants as gracefully as she can. She undoes off her bra, and doesn’t feel the usual rush of does-he-like-this anxiety about her body when she sees how he’s gripping himself and staring at her body.

Emboldened, she sits up and crawls across the bed to where he’s standing—Ben looks like he’s going to explode at the sight of her— and puts her hand over his, jacking him for a few strokes while looking up at him. She kisses his stomach and twines her hands in his and gently tugs. He follows her down, kissing her once and rubbing her clit almost idly with his left hand as he reaches over with his right to grab at his nightstand drawer. He returns with a condom and throws it on the bed, diving down to kiss her again.

“Fuck, Rey,” he says and he settles on top of her. He spreads his hands greedily over her chest, rubbing her nipples, and she likes how entirely his hands cover her. “This isn’t going to last long.”

She kisses him and hands him the condom in response, and once it’s on, guides him to her entrance. She’s still wet from him going down on her and they both gasp when the tip of him enters her. He moves slowly until he's entirely inside her and —oh, he’s so big, it’s been a while and the feel of him is overwhelming. She sucks in a breath and Ben immediately stops moving. “Are you ok?” He asks, eyes heated as he bends down to kiss her almost chastely on the lips

“Yeah, uh, you’re just really big.”

She takes deep breaths, and he doesn’t move, still propped up above her, and she can see every tensed muscle in his shoulders and arms. She knows he’s holding back as to not hurt her, but the ache is starting to fade, transitioning to arousal, into a heady, all-consuming awareness that it’s him, Ben Solo, inside her. Rey moves her hips in an experimental circle. It feels good, and she gasps, her hand flying up to pinch her nipple.

Ben is still unmoving above her, his hands fisting the comforter, his breaths harsh. His eyes are almost almost all pupil, and he looks desperate.

“Rey. Rey. You need to tell me if this is ok,” he says in that stern voice, only this time it’s half pleading . Rey thrusts her hips up to meet him. “Please, Ben,” she says with a smile.

He growls, thrusting forward with so much force that Rey is nudged up the bed. His uncertainty is gone now, and he looks like he did when she first met him, intent and kind of mean, and she gasps as he moves deeper and faster inside her.

“God, you feel so good,” he says in her ear. He lowers down to his elbows, curving his hands under her to give him the leverage to more forcefully thrust into her. “I knew you would.”

The fact that he’s thought about how she would feel sends a spike of arousal through Rey, and she tightens her arms where they’re circling his back. He moves his hand down to circle her clit with his thumb, and somehow, that, and the combination of being completely surrounded and filled by him overwhelms her, and Rey is coming again.

“Fuck,” he says, thrusting even faster now, all rhythm lost. His hands seem to be everywhere, roving around her body, grabbing her breasts and her ass and her hair, like he’s just trying to get closer to her, even though he’s already so deep inside. He has his face buried in her shoulder, and she feels the scratch of his teeth and his hand gripping her hip tightly when he comes with one final deep thrust.

Gradually he lets her go, and Rey fights the wild urge to cage her legs around his and keep him on top of her, their sweat and breath mixing together. He turns away to get up and throw the condom away, and Rey, despite her sex-drunk, exhausted haze, still manages to appreciatively notes the muscles in his butt as he walks away. When he gets back, she hops off the bed to go to the bathroom and once again, looks at herself in the mirror. This time, she’s sweaty and mussed, her hair plastered on one side, her shoulder red from his teeth. She’s not quite sure how to play this. Her last Sex Sleepover had been a long time ago, a Tinder random that made it very clear that he didn’t want her to stay over (The faux-casual way he’d said “So, I can call you a Lyft…?” less than a minute after he’d been inside her had haunted her for months). She doesn’t think Ben will do that. At least, she hopes not.

She goes back to his bedroom, and maybe it’s the post-sex hormones but she feels rush of soppy joy when she sees that Ben has brought his stupid Harvard blanket from the living room and arranged it neatly on the side of the bed opposite where he’s already under the covers, like they already have established sides. “You don’t want any of the blanket?” she says, walking over to the bed. “I run hot,” he says distantly, openly staring at the way her breasts move as she crawls into bed.

“Hm,” she says, slithering under the blankets and scooting over attach her body to his, even though it’s ridiculous to spoon someone who’s seven inches taller than you. “That’s good for me.”

“God, you’re so cold,” Ben says, flipping over and pouncing on her so she’s the little spoon. “You’ve got to work on your circulation,” he says rubbing her back with brisk circles.

It’s not sexual at all, and Rey thinks sleepily that he’s patting her like he would a stressed out dog, but his hands are so big and kind of rough, in a nice way, that she feels her body relax, and begin to slip into sleep. As she does, he feels him gently move her hair, and kiss the back of her neck, before slipping an arm around her and forming his body to hers.

#

He’s not there when she wakes up. It takes her a second to realize why she’s naked, why she’s in an unadorned bedroom so different from her messy room. She rolls out of Ben’s bed and grabs the first thing she sees on the ground—it turns out to be a Deafheaven teeshirt that goes almost to her knees—and wanders out to the living room. She stops short when she realizes Ben is shirtless on the floor, doing a rapid series of pushups with the kind of perfect form Rey never quite mangages.

She watches him do 20 more before realizing that he hasn’t noticed her. “Hi,” she says. “Do you do those every morning?” Pleasedon’tbeweird, pleasedon’tbeweird she chants in her head.

He quickly gets to his feet and mumbles something that sounds like a yes. He’s not really looking at her when he asks her if she wants coffee, and she wonders if she should just say no. She’d had such a good time last night, and she doesn’t want to hang around if it’s going to be this awkward. Last night, as she fell asleep, she’d imagined lazy morning sex and him telling her about the photo of the giant hairy dog on his bookshelf. Instead, she’s getting whatever this is. But she ends up saying sure, because, maybe because she’s a masochist, but mainly because she’d noticed he has the coffee beans from the expensive cafe she likes.

She sits on one of his kitchen stools and watches him across the counter as he makes a French press, and he hands her a mug. He stares at her as she takes her first sip. “Is it ok?” he asks.

“Yeah, thank you.” Fortified with her first sips, Rey decides they’re both too old for this.

“Ben, I had a really good time last night,” she says, speaking into her mug. “Not just the sex but the hanging out and the talking. I’d like to do it again. Obviously, if you want. Yeah.” She cringes at how she ends her little speech, lifting her eyes to look at him.

Ben is still staring at her, his face blank. “Yeah?” He says, a little disbelieving.

“Yeah,” she says, not sure of his tone. “Are we doing a bit?”

He still looking at her a little suspiciously. “I’m historically not very good at this,” he says, flapping one of his hands between them. He’s still in the kitchen, the countertop between them, and Rey has the thought that it’s like they’re negotiating something.

“We-ell, we don’t have to if you don’t want to, I’m not trying to force—” Rey snaps, a little wounded. Is he trying to talk her out of attempting to date him? She’s not trying to marry him, for god’s sake, just maybe get drinks and make fun of Hux’s stupid opinions on aueter theory some more and definitely have some more sex.

“No,” Ben says, turning away from her, running a frustrated hand through his hair. He looks back at her, and his face isn’t closed off anymore, but open and a little sad. “I just have a tendency to disappoint people who I care about. And I don’t want to be weird, but I like you. I have since I started and didn’t expect anything to ever happen, but then this happened, and I just, really don’t want to fuck this up or do anything to hurt you.”

Rey doesn’t like being vulnerable, of giving someone cheat codes to her deepest emotional wounds, but Ben looks so resigned, and sounds so confident that he’s not worth whatever Rey wants to give him that it makes her more honest she’s used to.

“Well,” Rey says, slipping off her stool and walking around the counter to him. “I have some minor to serious abandonment issues from some family bullshit. And one ex told me my body looked like a little kid’s, which really fucked me up for awhile, and I could list of bunch of other stuff. But,” she continues, louder, as he opens his mouth angrily, as if to say something about her ex, “My point is, it sounds like we both have stuff. And your stuff, no offense, doesn’t sound especially worse than my stuff, or like stuff I can’t deal with if you want to do this. As long as you, like, try, and don’t use it as an excuse to be an asshole.”

Ben looks down at her, and he still seems a little tense, but his eyes are warm and hopeful. “I can do that,” he says. He puts his arms around her and kisses the top of her head, and they stay like that for a bit, arms around each other in his kitchen, until Rey lifts her head.

“Want to get breakfast and then rewatch the last half hour of the movie?” she says. “Or just do other stuff involving your couch?”

Ben smiles.

“I’d like that.”

#

  
<a_hux> Wow. All I can say after watching the Irishman. If that does end up being Scorsese’s last film, it will truly be the end of an epoch in American cinema. The acting, the cinematography, the pacing...I had food poisoning but forgot how bad I felt because of the movie. I could have watched three more hours.

<reyjoh> ya same

<a_hux> @b_solo What did you think?

<b_solo> Yeah, I thought it was good.

<a_hux>...

<a_hux> Don't you guys have anything more to say??? It was an epic all consuming cinema experience!!! Were you guys drunk or being actively robbed during the movie?

<a_hux> At least tell me what you guys thought of the last half hour. For me, it transformed and elevated the movie—into something that perfectly ended a singular story of one man while also revealing universal truths about the human condition.

<reyjoh> totally

<b_solo> That’s what we thought, too.

**Author's Note:**

> [ Occasional tweets here](https://twitter.com/kalx58)


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